The Fulton Report and the Battle over College Autonomy (1963–1976)

⚠️ This article belongs to the Wild History module (13: University Politics and Structural Reform). Events are compiled from multiple independent sources, with each claim cited. Sensitive personal matters are anonymised as "Mr. [Surname]"; founding scholars and departed figures already named in publicly available historical materials are identified by name per the sources. Current leadership is referred to by title only.

On 24 December 1976, the Legislative Council passed the Chinese University of Hong Kong Ordinance at its third reading, converting a federally structured university barely thirteen years old into a centrally governed one. That same day, nine members of the New Asia College Board of Governors resigned in a joint protest — the largest and most unambiguous act of collective dissent in CUHK's history. Among the nine were two founding scholars of New Asia: Ch'ien Mu and Tang Chun-i. The roots of this upheaval reach back three years, to an internal reform group originally conceived as an act of "self-rescue".

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# I. The Fulton Committee (1962–1963): A Federal Blueprint

According to comprehensive material on Wikipedia^※, in 1962 the Hong Kong government appointed Lord Fulton (John Fulton, founding Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sussex) to chair a committee studying the feasibility of merging the three existing colleges — Chung Chi, New Asia and United — into a single university.

In 1963, the committee issued the Fulton Commission Report, proposing a federal constitution that would integrate the three colleges while preserving each one's own administration, teaching and cultural identity. The university centre was to act as a coordinating layer, not a replacement for college functions. The Hong Kong government accepted the report's recommendations and enacted the Chinese University of Hong Kong Ordinance the same year; the University formally came into being on 5 October 1963.

According to official historical materials^※, CUHK's founding philosophy was to preserve the teaching, administrative and cultural traditions of the three colleges, united under a federal structure into a single university.

This architecture mattered enormously to all three colleges — and above all to New Asia. Founded in 1949 by scholars who had come south to postwar Hong Kong — Ch'ien Mu, Tang Chun-i, Chang Pi-chieh and others — New Asia had been established in extremely difficult conditions to carry on the Chinese humanistic tradition, with the stated mission of countering "the ills of modern materialism through humanistic education." When the three colleges merged to form CUHK, New Asia understood the government's invitation — made under the banner of a "federal" structure — to mean that the colleges would remain independent educational entities, sharing certain resources and degree-awarding powers only at the university level. That understanding would later become the moral foundation New Asia repeatedly invoked in its protest against the 1976 restructuring.

# 1.1 The Founders' Personal Friendship and a Promise

According to a survey article on Ch'ien Mu's departure from New Asia College (by Liu Youyang, Rujiawang)^※, Fulton himself spoke Cantonese and read Chinese books, and enjoyed a close personal rapport with the founding scholars — he once described Ch'ien Mu's temperament as "your heart is like stone, immovable" （「君心如石，不可转也」）. While the committee was drafting its federal plan, Ch'ien Mu consulted directly with Fulton, and the two agreed: the New Asia Research Institute would be written into the new university's founding legislation as CUHK's "first research institute."

This friendship and its promise formed a concrete layer of memory New Asia would later draw on when invoking "the spirit of federalism." According to the same source, Ch'ien Mu reflected in his later years with regret that the days when he could directly debate the details of running the University with the government's representatives were gone forever — a relation that ceased to exist once Li Choh-ming took the helm (for a timeline of successive Vice-Chancellors, see vice-chancellors-governance-timeline-1964-2024.md). An earlier round of disagreement between Ch'ien Mu and Li Choh-ming over educational philosophy, and Ch'ien Mu's resignation as New Asia College Head in 1965, are treated separately in 〈The Founding Clash of Ideals: Ch'ien Mu, First Vice-Chancellor Li Choh-ming, and the 1965 Resignation〉.

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# II. Operational Frictions and Centralising Pressures (1963–1976)

After 1963, the federal structure generated a succession of contradictions in practice:

• each college retained its own curriculum committees, staff appointment powers and the like, making uniform academic standards hard to achieve;
• the university centre (at the Vice-Chancellor level) lacked integrating authority over financial resource allocation and degree-awarding standards;
• the government's education authorities and the predecessor bodies of the UGC questioned the sustainability of the federal structure;
• the colleges' separate ways also meant overlapping resources — each might run similar programmes and maintain its own administrative team, so economies of scale were hard to realise.

By the early 1970s, these tensions had built to a critical point, prompting the University to try resolving the crisis itself through "internal reform" — rather than waiting passively for government intervention.

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# III. The New Asia Research Institute Leaves CUHK in 1974: An Early Sign of Strain

Before the 1976 restructuring crisis, the relationship between colleges and the university centre had already ruptured once, in a different arena — the severing of the New Asia Research Institute (established in 1953 by Ch'ien Mu, Tang Chun-i and other scholars who had come south; a postgraduate teaching and research body that predated CUHK itself) from the university.

According to the Wikipedia entry on the New Asia Research Institute^※, the Institute joined CUHK in 1963 along with New Asia College and was for a time subsidised by the University. But in 1966–1967, CUHK established its own Graduate School and Research Institute for Chinese Studies, and the New Asia Research Institute's position in the University's overall structure was progressively marginalised — in 1970, the Institute was forced to stop recruiting research students, instead taking on "research assistant trainees." After Tang Chun-i became its director in 1968, tensions between the Institute and the University intensified further.

Between June and August 1974, CUHK ceased its subvention of the New Asia Research Institute; the New Asia College Board of Governors then resolved to detach the Institute from the University, re-attaching it to the newly formed "New Asia Education & Culture Foundation," and to resume autonomous recruitment of research students. That same year, Tang Chun-i retired from CUHK to serve full-time as the Institute's director.

According to the same source, this separation had no direct causal link to the 1976 Ordinance amendments two years later — but it reflected the strain that had been building between the colleges and the university centre throughout 1966–1974. It can be read as a dress rehearsal, before the formal eruption of 1976, of the core question — "does the University have the right to unilaterally narrow the colleges' existing powers?" — and yet another concrete instance of what New Asia would later recall as the "progressive erosion of college autonomy." The cast of protagonists overlaps partially with the 1965 clash over ideals in which Ch'ien Mu resigned as New Asia's College Head (see 〈The Founding Clash of Ideals〉), but the point of contention is different, and the two episodes should not be conflated.

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# IV. First Skirmish: Yü Ying-shih and the "Working Group on University Administrative Reform" (1974–1975)

# 4.1 Who Would Lead the Reform

Drawing on a synthesis of secondary sources, in 1973 the historian Yü Ying-shih was recruited to serve as Head of New Asia College (at the time college chiefs were styled "Head"; after 1976 the title became "College Head"). Around early 1974, the then Vice-Chancellor Li Choh-ming invited Yü Ying-shih to chair an internal review body — the "Working Group on University Administrative Reform" — whose members included younger scholars who would themselves leave marks on New Asia's history, among them Ambrose King and Chen Fong-ching.

The group's establishment was, in a sense, the University's attempt to get in first: rather than passively await an external review led by the government, the University would produce its own reform plan from within.

# 4.2 The Chairman Caught in the Middle, Pleasing No One

According to Zhou Yan, "Yü Ying-shih and the CUHK Restructuring Crisis"^※ (originally published in Southern Weekly), supporters of reform believed it would benefit the University's development, while opponents held that it violated the founding agreement — and Yü Ying-shih stood directly in the crossfire. The article cites the recollections of Chen Fong-ching, who took part in the reform process: Yü Ying-shih was a member of New Asia's first graduating class and its most accomplished alumnus; returning to his alma mater as Head, "everyone had high hopes for him, and he had to manage relations with both those above and below." Li Choh-ming had chosen him to chair the working group precisely because of this. But the job of coordinator between the factions was thankless:

• the fiercest opponents of reform were to be found in Yü Ying-shih's own New Asia — most of the senior figures and teaching staff on campus, as well as the Board members and alumni outside it, were opposed, viewing the reform as a government plot to overturn the colleges' legal status, and resenting Yü Ying-shih accordingly;
• by contrast, United College and Chung Chi College were far more accommodating: according to the article, United's leadership, having come from government backgrounds, largely supported the reform, while Chung Chi's leadership, despite reservations, was broadly able to accept it.

The same source records that Tang Chun-i tacitly allowed New Asia students to put up dazibao (large-character posters) in his name on campus, attacking Yü Ying-shih in his capacity as chairman of the reform group. The editors of the Complete Works of Tang Chun-i later made no secret of this, while adding that "the Master never attacked proponents of reform on a personal basis." As for Mou Tsung-san, a fellow scholar in the New Confucian lineage, the article records that he "never explicitly opposed the reform, nor did he sign the open letter against it." What had begun as an act of "self-rescue" instead tore open a rift inside New Asia itself.

# 4.3 The Fate of the Working Group

The working group's report was finally submitted to Vice-Chancellor Li Choh-ming and forwarded to the government — but the government did not adopt it. Instead, it started over from scratch, appointing a fresh committee headed by Fulton to produce its own recommendations, which were swiftly accepted and implemented. According to the same source, Yü Ying-shih ended up pleasing neither side — the college elders saw him as having "sold out his alma mater," while the government ignored his plan — and he subsequently "returned to America in dejection."

This interlude, so often skipped over in CUHK's official institutional history, shows that the 1976 restructuring was no plan air-dropped out of nowhere by the government: the University had indeed tried to respond to centralising pressures in its own way. But ultimate control of the reform agenda fell, in the end, to an external committee appointed by the government.

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# V. The Second Fulton Committee and the 1976 Restructuring

# 5.1 Composition and Method

In 1975, the Chancellor of the University appointed an external committee, again chaired by Lord Fulton, to re-examine the University's constitution — CUHK's second Fulton Committee. Its members also included I.C.M. Maxwell (Secretary), Sir Michael Herries, and the sociologist C.K. Yang. The committee gathered views from stakeholders in the form of five days of videotaped hearings.

The committee's report was laid before the Legislative Council in June 1976, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong Bill 1976 was promptly introduced into the legislative process.

# 5.2 What the Amendments Did: From Federal to Unitary

According to the historical archive of the CUHK Ordinance^※, Wikipedia^※ and a synthesis of secondary sources, the core recommendation of the second Fulton Report was to transfer a large body of college powers to the university centre:

• academic policy, finance, student registration, staff appointments, curriculum design, examinations and degree award were all assigned to the University's administrative structure;
• even practical matters such as building maintenance were made the University's responsibility;
• the colleges' remit was narrowed to "small group, student-oriented teaching";
• the official rationale stressed "rationalisation" — the overlapping resources resulting from the three colleges going their separate ways had to be dissolved through a unified structure.

Then Assistant Secretary for Social Services M.C. Morgan defended the reform, arguing that "a situation with each college developing into a little university of its own was not compatible with the sensible evolution of a modern major seat of higher learning" — a line frequently quoted since as the official logic of government-driven centralisation.

After the Ordinance was amended, Fulton himself offered an interpretation of the colleges' new role, recorded in related historical materials: "The college is the natural home of student-oriented teaching, a community in which senior and junior members pursue shared academic interests" — a formulation often cited to explain the repositioning of colleges under the new structure.

# 5.3 The Legislative Timeline

• June 1976 — the second Fulton Report is laid before the Legislative Council;
• the Chinese University of Hong Kong Bill 1976 then enters the legislative process;
• 24 December 1976 — the Bill passes its third reading in the Legislative Council;
• the restructuring takes formal effect in December 1976, and the University shifts wholesale from a federal to a unitary operating structure.

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# VI. New Asia's Opposition: The Collective Resignation of Nine Board Members

# 6.1 The Position of the Board of Governors

According to Wikipedia and related records^※ and the Wikipedia entry on New Asia College^※, the New Asia College Board of Governors explicitly refused to accept the proposed restructuring, arguing that the amendments would destroy the college system and reduce the colleges to "empty shells."

Denny Huang, a Chung Chi College Board member and scholar, also publicly criticised the centralisation, saying the college governance layer would be reduced from bodies with real involvement to "managers of an estate."

# 6.2 24 December 1976: Nine Resignations

On the very day the Bill passed its third reading, nine members of the New Asia College Board of Governors resigned jointly in protest. According to the Wikipedia entry on New Asia College^※ and a related survey article^※, the resigning members were:

• Mr. Tang Chun-i — New Confucian scholar, one of New Asia's founders;
• Mr. Ch'ien Mu — historian, New Asia's first Head and one of its founders;
• Mr. Li Zu-fa (李祖法)
• Mr. Shen Yi-chen (沈亦珍)
• Mr. Wu Jun-sheng (吴俊升)
• Mr. Xu Ji-liang (徐季良)
• Mr. Liu Han-dong (刘汉栋)
• Mr. Ren Guo-rong (任国荣)
• Mr. Guo Zheng-da (郭正达)

Their joint statement read: 「联合制终于被弃，改为单一集权制……同人等过去惨淡经营新亚书院以及参加创设与发展中文大学所抱之教育理想无法实现……是非功罪，并以诉诸香港之社会良知与将来之历史评判。」 ("The federal system has at last been abandoned in favour of a single centralised one… The educational ideals for which we laboured so long to sustain New Asia College, and with which we joined in the founding and development of the Chinese University, can no longer be realised… We leave the question of right and wrong, of merit and blame, to the social conscience of Hong Kong and the judgement of history.") (As quoted across secondary sources; the original wording is subject to the archival record.)

# 6.3 Tang Chun-i's Moral Charge

According to a related survey article^※, Tang Chun-i later wrote to the CUHK Student Press, saying the restructuring was "a matter of the past — but the question of its right and wrong is not over." He stressed that the government "first invited New Asia and Chung Chi to join in founding the Chinese University under the banner of a federal system, and in the end broke its word, converting it in substance into a unitary system," and argued that this "constituted a moral offence."

This was the weightiest charge in New Asia's case against the reform — it lifted the dispute from the technical plane of "which arrangement is administratively more efficient" to the moral plane of "whether the government had breached its faith to the founding promises."

By multiple historical accounts, New Asia was by far the most unequivocally opposed of the three colleges, and its tenacity in defending the collegiate ideal was closely bound up with its founding philosophy — the College was established by a group of scholars who had come south from the mainland (Ch'ien Mu foremost among them), and it placed exceptional weight on the humanistic tradition of the college as a community of scholars, carrying with it a historical wariness of centralised authority.

# 6.4 Positions Placed Side by Side

On the University's official account, the 1976 amendments aimed to "strengthen the University's overall resource coordination and the consistency of academic standards," allowing the University to operate more efficiently; Assistant Secretary for Social Services M.C. Morgan's remarks represent the government's case for the necessity of centralisation.

On the account of the New Asia opposition (represented by Tang Chun-i), the amendments in substance ended the spirit of federalism and constituted the government's breach of faith with the founding promise; the colleges were reduced from autonomous bodies holding real academic powers to functional units managing residential life and general education, and the ideal of the scholarly community was weakened.

On the account of the side that took over New Asia after the reform (represented by Ambrose King), the important recommendations of the second Fulton Report in substance continued the direction of the internal reform working group that Yü Ying-shih had chaired; and the Chinese University achieved tremendous development in the decades after the reform took effect — a retrospective justification of the reform in light of its later fruits.

To this day, assessments of the 1976 amendments remain divided — supporters regard them as a necessary institutional integration, critics as a major curtailment of college autonomy, even a betrayal of the founding promise by the government. This Archive records the positions of the parties; it does not adjudicate.

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# VII. New Asia after the Reform: Ambrose King Takes Over

According to the Wikipedia entry on New Asia College^※, following the restructuring a faction led by Ambrose King — chiefly scholars who had come to Hong Kong from Taiwan — took over the College. King assumed office in March 1977 as New Asia's seventh College Head (the first to hold the title "College Head" after the reform; the earlier title had been "Head"), serving until July 1985.

King's assessment of the restructuring differed from Tang Chun-i's. According to related sources, he held that the working group's important recommendations had later been "adopted in the second Fulton Report, and in the nearly forty years since they were implemented, the Chinese University has achieved tremendous development." Placed beside Tang Chun-i's charge of "breach of faith and moral offence," the two statements constitute two fundamentally different historical memories of the same restructuring within New Asia itself.

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# VIII. The Later Evolution of the College System

After 1976, the college system did not die — it persisted in an adjusted form:

• colleges remained responsible for student residence, general education (college activities/programmes), student development and related functions;
• between 2006 and 2012, the University added five new colleges (S.H. Ho, CW Chu, Wu Yee Sun, Lee Woo Sing and Morningside), and with the resumption of the four-year degree in 2012, rolled out its "3+3+0" college general education model across the board;
• the college system is today positioned as a core element of CUHK's "distinctive educational experience," rather than as the autonomous academic bodies of the early years.

It is worth noting that the 1976 reform, while stripping the colleges of academic and administrative autonomy, indirectly paved the way for the later expansion of "universal college membership" (see 〈Residence, Hall Culture and the College Traditions〉). Once colleges were no longer independent teaching entities, the creation of new colleges no longer carried the institutional baggage of "setting up another independent camp"; the University could keep adding colleges at a comparatively low political cost, extending college membership to a wider share of the student body.

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# IX. Recent Governance Issues (2020s)

According to a report by Hong Kong Free Press^※ (May 2026), the University has proposed new governance legislation involving adjustments to the leadership structure of colleges and the arrangement of alumni representative bodies — but the details are a matter in progress, and the official final announcement prevails; current leadership is referred to by title only, per this Archive's rules.

It is worth noting that, according to an on.cc (Oriental Daily News) report on the 2026 proposed amendments^※ and §6.1 of 〈The Battle over Council Restructuring: The 2023 CUHK (Amendment) Ordinance〉, the provision in this round of 2026 amendment proposals most directly relevant to the present article is this: colleges would be expressly required to answer to the University Council through their Assembly of Fellows / Board of Overseers, with a new communication mechanism to be established, chaired by the Council's chairman and attended by representatives of the colleges. The provision puts the question of "to whom are the colleges accountable?" back on the table. Half a century ago, the second Fulton Report moved the colleges' academic and administrative powers up to the university centre, narrowing the college remit to "small group, student-oriented teaching"; the 2026 proposal, by contrast, operates within the existing college framework, further specifying the chain of accountability between colleges and the Council. Online commentary has criticised it as placing "the colleges entirely under the Council." Whether, compared with the trajectory described in §8 above — the college system continuing after 1976 "in an adjusted form" — this constitutes yet another narrowing of autonomy is as yet undetermined, and must await the final shape of the amendment after it takes effect.

Seen against the long arc of CUHK's institutional history, 1976 was the first contest fought on the terrain of "the Ordinance as battlefield." The 2004–2011 disputes over medium of instruction and internationalisation and the 2023 Council restructuring all continue the same central thread: how the University should be governed, and by whom, has never been a neutral technical question at CUHK.

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